So, Americans are Dumb, But What About the White Ones?

“…we have a lot of very poor people without access to good education, and a huge immigrant population that doesn’t even speak English.” When surveys focus on well-off, native-born respondents, the U.S. actually holds its own against Europe.

It seems like these studies come out every month. And they land with all the devastating blah that yet another story about Catholic priest defiling the innocence of altar boys, or another American soldier dying in some country thousands of miles away.

But I haven’t heard this one yet. If you discount poor people and immigrants, the United States tests on par with Europe? I find that hard to believe. Americans wear their ignorance far too proudly. In the same befuddling way we profess an earnest enjoyment for Nascar or Baseball. Which, in an objective reality, we could all agree are stupid, pointless, boring, and unwatchable events without the absolutely necessary addition of mind-altering substances and high-fat edibles.

And after that wonderful point about poor American’s testing poorly (gee, you think) then this Newsweek article takes the same dive bomb into the education issue, but at least they had the decency not to bury the lede. And the brilliance to leave us with this flourish:

Don’t get us wrong: civic ignorance is nothing new. For as long as they’ve existed, Americans have been misunderstanding checks and balances and misidentifying their senators. And they’ve been lamenting the philistinism of their peers ever since pollsters started publishing these dispiriting surveys back in Harry Truman’s day.